AUSTRALIA: The Nymph of Nullarbor

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A naked nymph pulling a kangaroo's tail? Or was she really pulling a million Australian legs?

"She's out there, all right," said Hunter Ron Sells, insisting he had spotted a white girl running wild with a herd of kangaroos across the Nullarbor desert in southwestern Australia. "When she saw us, she watched us for a few minutes, and then she dashed off with the 'roos into the scrub."

Sells is not the only desert rat who claims to have observed this unusual bit of fauna. Rancher Graeme Campbell reports that the girl wears nothing but a sort of furry bikini. Bus Driver Bob Marshall swore that late one night he and his passengers spotted her wearing a brief skirt and a furry cloak. The passengers generously left some sandwiches and milk for her beside the road.

Word of the sightings spread across Australia, and in no time at all, the dusty hamlet of Eucla (pop. 8) was overrun by reporters and television crews in search of the desert nymph and her marsupial friends. Alas, they found not a single clue. Nor could anybody determine who the bikinied girl might be. An Adelaide man wondered if it could be his missing daughter, who had loved to hand-feed kangaroos near their former home. Steve Patupis, owner of Eucla's sole watering hole, the Amber Motel, suggested that "she" might be an itinerant Englishman who had disappeared from the motel last year, leaving his luggage behind.

To residents of Eucla, the affair was great fun. Not surprisingly, they kept reporting new traces of the mysterious nymph. Last week Patupis proposed to capitalize on Eucla's newfound notoriety by building a vast tourist complex, complete with gambling casino. After all, he reasoned, "we must not let this worldwide publicity go down the drain."

By that time, two enterprising cameramen had managed to produce some pictures of a girl running with the kangaroos—and actually pulling their tails. Desert-wise oldtimers in the sun-parched Nullarbor, however, were not convinced. "Any bird go flitting around in the scrub here with nothing on," snorted one bushman, "would bloody soon burn off what's bobbing, I can tip you." Added Sheep Farmer Harvey Gurney: "The water holes are all dried up. She'd be burned to a crisp."